Hopes and Fears

01. Somewhere only we know.

   James Wilson is drunk and lonely and angry.  He isn’t sure who he’s angry with, or why he’s angry (but then again, he’s not entirely sure why he’s drunk either), but that all ceased to matter a while ago.  He’s curled up in a heap on the sofa, almost catatonic, but not quite, and awake enough to register the half-eaten cherry pie on the table, the half-full cup of coffee that went cold an hour or so ago, the spilt coffee splashed over the sofa and the sleeve of his shirt, and the cracked mug still lying on the floor beside him.  There’s a headache pounding a baseline loudly in his brain, and like a broken record the God, I don’t know what I ever fucking saw in you goes around and around his head, mixed with a disdainful Aussie accent that thickens every time he rehears it.  He doesn’t allow himself to feel devastated (although he does) and silently, helplessly looks around for the bottle of whatever it is he’s drinking in the hope that he’s numb enough to go to work tomorrow. 

02. Bend and break.

   Tears roll helplessly down his cheeks and he finds himself trying to scream: “No!” but no sound comes out.  His breath catches in his chest and the constant painful bleeps from about seven monitors screech in his ears, and he doubles over, sobbing harder, as he watches about four doctors try and save the man he loves.

   House’s fingers curl around his shoulder, holding him back because he’ll only get in the way, and he’s whispering softly, in a voice so broken and shaking that it doesn’t sound like House at all.  It’s all right, Robert, it’s all right.  But it isn’t, because Oncologists aren’t supposed to get cancer themselves, aren’t supposed to die in hospitals with heart monitors flatlining and screaming their horrible sounds into the too-bright room.

   He and House call the time of death together in trembling voices, and for a moment, their differences are just… gone.

03. We might as well be strangers.

   Chase keeps his head down and chews his biro, and works out a codebreaker with patience.  22 must be A… but then what does that make 17?  Around him, Cameron and Foreman discuss what could possibly be wrong with their patient, but Chase doesn’t care enough.  He knows he should, but oh well.  Right now, he’s got a slight (well, chronic) migraine, and his eyes feel tired and heavy.

  “Chase?” House asks.  The Australian’s head snaps up too fast, and he winces as his neck crunches.  “Have you heard a word we’ve been saying?”

   Chase considers denying it all, but he can’t.

  “Not really.” He admits.

  “You want to go and get Wilson for a consult then?” suggests House.  Chase sighs and obediently fetches the Oncologist, since he’s House’s errand boy now apparently, and watches the way Wilson avoids his gaze and they don’t talk.  He thinks that this is worse than anything else ever could be, because now he and Wilson are acting like they barely knew each other, and yet every time he shuts his eyes he can feel him so, so close.

04. Everybody’s changing.

   House takes too many Vicodin and gets immeasurably stoned.  He tells Cameron exactly why he wouldn’t sleep with her (“It would be like fucking a puppy… hey, isn’t that, like, illegal?”) until she bursts into tears and storms out.  And when House’s body reacts to the overdose of painkillers sashaying through his system, and he starts throwing up into the bin, Foreman sweeps anything that ever belonged to him into his bag, pulls on his coat and walks out in a way that makes it clear he’s never coming back.  Chase sighs and pours House a glass of water, and paces.  Funny how the first one to stab House in the back is the last one standing, although he knows it won’t be for long.  House just needs to find the right nerve to bruise, and Chase’ll be gone too, faxing in his letter of resignation so that he never has to come back here again. 

  “You’ll never mean anything to him you know.” House tells him, eyes glinting malevolently. 

  “Stay the hell out of my private life.” Chase snarls, and turns to leave.

  “Where are you going?  Want to sell me out to yet more billionaires?”

  “I was going to go and get Wilson,” Chase sighs, reaching a decision.  “Since he’s the only one who can put up with you when you’re like this.”

  “And what does that say about our relationship, as opposed to yours?” Asks House, batting his eyelashes and looking smug.  Chase bites his lips as he shrugs on his jacket, and walks out forever without looking back.

05. Your eyes open.

   Chase pauses with his fingers clasping the door handle of exam room three, gnawing his thumbnail, plucking up the courage to speak.  Wilson doesn’t look at him as he reknots his tie with quivering hands.

  “Your wife knows.” Chase says softly, choosing to leave unsaid Julie’s helpless sobbing, broken voice, and the quiet way she begged him to leave her husband alone.  Wilson freezes, and it would be comical if the whole situation weren’t so pathetic.

  “Does that mean-” Wilson turns around, teeth grazing his lower lip.

  “We have to.” Chase replies, realising for the first time that Wilson is weak, weaker than most people will ever know, and he slams the door behind him with a little more force than is necessary.  He can’t blame this infidelity all on Wilson, but he’s sure that he feels more guilty than the other man, and he isn’t even married.

06. She has no time.

   So Wilson already knows that Chase doesn’t need much persuading, that he’s too easy, that it doesn’t take much to wheedle him into bed, but he still feels betrayed as House gleefully tells him that Chase and Cameron- yes, that Chase and that Cameron, how many others do we know?- have had sex.  Wilson knows that technically he’s cheating on Chase every time he tries to patch things up with his wide, but then that’s a part of the deal with him, an aspect of the package that he makes very clear.  Chase calls him a hypocrite when he informs the Australian that they’re over, and then shouts that he’s a fucking fool.  God, thinks Wilson, I know.

07. Can’t stop now.

   Chase watches with blue eyes devoid of tears but pretty much devoid of all other emotions too.  He clenches shaking fists and tells himself not to-not to- break down.  He really, really should have seen this coming, but he didn’t, and now he’s watching Wilson and House wrapped around each other like lifelines, kissing passionately and far too familiarly to never have done this before, and Chase hates himself for being so so so stupid, and not realising that that friendship was a lot more than just, well, friendship.  He grits those perfectly whitened teeth and thinks about his options.  He can stand here and watch and torture himself more (he’s bloody good at that), but then either House or Wilson will see him, with this helpless devastation painted onto his face, and he won’t do that.  He could go in there and tell Wilson that it’s ten kinds of over, whatever it was that they had going on.  Instead, Chase shakes his head and walks away, and knows that this is the last time he’ll be fooled by that so-desperately-wanting-to-be-genuine smile of Dr James Wilson.

08. Sunshine.

   Chase checks and re-checks his boarding pass, his rucksack hand-luggage leaning against his calf, blonde hair reflecting the clean white sunlight in the airport.  Wilson sits beside him, sipping distractedly at a cappuccino.

  “I’ll call you when I get back to Australia.” Offers Chase.  “Just to let you know that, you know, the plane didn’t crash or something.”

   Wilson considers saying something like don’t go back to Australia, I’m going to miss you, you do actually mean quite a lot to me you know, I can’t help it, but he doesn’t and instead takes a deeper mouthful of coffee.

  “Yeah,” he mumbles, trying to avoid swallowing the drink down the wrong way and choking for his pains.  “That would be good.”

   There’s an uncomfortable pause before Chase kisses him gently.

  “I don’t think either of us can do the long-distance thing.” He says, his face still close to Wilson’s.  “And I have to go back home.  This is for the best.”

  “I know.” Wilson sighs, and watches Chase leave to board his plane, the sunlight shining off his blonde hair, and blinks too hard for a moment.

09. The last time.

    Chase lies asleep in bed, curled up in a small little ball like a child, because he always sleeps like that.  Wilson sits curled up in a chair near him, watching him sleep, thinking a few things over.  Looking at the innocence, the exhaustion, the vulnerability.  He can’t do this any more, he realises, and he just isn’t sure why.

10. On a day like today.

   Three a.m and the rain is chucking it down outside.  Chase taps a pen against his hip as he swallows coffee like he’s gasping air, and alternates this with mouthfuls of a sandwich that probably would not be edible were it not for the fact he’s far too tired to actually taste it.  He chews and chews and chews and then swallows, hard, realising that the food really hasn’t been masticated properly.  He sighs and gives up on trying to give his body something to run on (caffeine and sugar should be enough to keep him going for another couple of hours before the shakes hit).

  “Is House here?” asks Wilson, appearing in the doorway.  Chase nearly drops his coffee cup and shakes his head.

  “Of course not.”  He replies.  There’s a pause.  “You want some coffee?”

  “Sure.” Wilson murmurs, coming over and taking a black mug from Chase.  He wraps his hands around it and they drink in solid silence.  In the end, they lean towards each other, mouths almost touching, attraction eighteen months old nearly taking charge.  In the end, they can’t do it, can’t manage that one little kiss, and Chase walks out with regret staining his skin.

11. Untitled 1.

   Wilson, in good faith, handed over one of his patients to House and his team.  It was a little boy, about seven or eight, with leukaemia and then something else.  They were supposed to find out what was wrong.  They didn’t.  Chase was in the room when the kid crashed, and he couldn’t save him.  And Wilson said he didn’t blame him, but he does.  He does.  It’s in the lines of his face and the way he can’t meet Chase’s eyes any more, the way he folds his hands tightly around mugs as though he wants to prevent himself from touching Chase in any way, and they don’t talk, don’t touch, don’t kiss, don’t do anything.

  “It wasn’t my fault.” Chase says softly, even though he knows Wilson already knows that and it doesn’t actually matter, because he’s still pinning the blame on him.  The issue stretches between them painfully, and Chase sighs and gets to his feet.  “You know what?  Screw this.”

12. Bedshaped.

   Chase sighs and watches Wilson slide the ring onto his latest wife’s finger.  He doesn’t recall the name- doesn’t suppose it matters- it begins with N or M or Z or something.  He’s miserable- not actively so, just slightly rejected, even though this has been coming for months.  He shifts in his uncomfortable black suit (he doesn’t wear black, not ever, it’s always reminded him too much of his mother’s funeral) and plays with his deep red tie, winding around his fingers.  He supposes that it’s over now, really over, and starts to work out how wide the smile he’s supposed to paste onto his face will need to be.

Keeping Me Up All Night

You’re

(In spite of apparent evidence to the contrary, Chase was absolutely no good at gambling, since he always lost, and his poker face was really more of a sulky pout that some people found sexy and most people didn’t even register.  So he didn’t play poker that evening, even when Foreman suggested they have a game, and he didn’t meet Wilson’s eyes, not ever, because he couldn’t allow himself to hope-or gamble- that there’d be anything other than disinterest in them.)

Keeping

(Chase was more annoyed about the fact that he was forced to miss the sight of Wilson in formalwear than the fact House had cost him the chance to have sex with a woman gullible enough to believe you could punch sharks, not that he’d ever mention it.  House might have noticed this himself were he not too busy staring at Cameron in That red dress.)

Me

(And fine, it wasn’t easy to resist the temptation to unknot that black tie with one hand and pull Wilson closer with the other, murmuring some cheesy line involving playing cards as metaphors, but Chase had never been that kind of guy, and besides, the kid was dying, and he wasn’t going to interrupt the diagnosis.)

Up

(House had the multi-tasking ability to play a game of poker down the phoneline, successfully wind up both Cuddy and Wilson without needing to be in the room, torture himself, look incredibly sexy in a white shirt- at least from the way Cameron was staring- and spit out diseases like a machine gun, and Chase silently marvelled and hated him, because he couldn’t even run a simple test when James Wilson was in the same room.)

All

(The taste of rapidly-cooling cheap coffee filled his mouth and he stared hard at Cameron’s shoes, which looked incredibly uncomfortable to wear, his hands shaking, his eyes tired, terrified of what House would do to them if they couldn’t find a cure.  So he didn’t say one word for the diagnosis, and kept his eyes on Cameron’s heels, and let Wilson’s words wash over him like they might know how to soothe his aching head.)

Night

(He was preoccupied and exhausted- they all were, whether because House’s constant, tormented helplessness was affecting them or simply because it was getting late- and even splashing cold water on his face in the bathroom didn’t help, not even with Wilson beside him mirroring his actions and mumbling about hearts and clubs and royal flushes.)

It’s

(The kid -Ian- had blue eyes and Chase rubbed at his own baby blues as House repeatedly tried to give life where there wasn’t any, the defibrillator shaking his tiny body and Chase felt sick, so sick, and all he wanted to do what run downstairs and tear the cards out of Wilson’s hands and kiss him until nothing else mattered.  And then there was a pulse.)

Five

(The medicine couldn’t be connected up fast enough and Chase’s fingers were trembling, remembering House letting go of his burden and pain in the cool silence of the lab- he pretended he couldn’t hear the sobs through the door but he could- and wishing into the silence and the parents’ grateful tears that he could let go of this now.)

In

(Cameron was massaging her aching feet in the conference room and Foreman had already left, leaving Chase to erase the whiteboard.  He left Ester’s file on the table though, because that was for House to do what he wanted with it.  “He shouldn’t keep doing that to himself,” Cameron said, and Chase smiled because he shouldn’t keep doing it to himself either, but he did.  Wilson was the kind of guy who invited you to torture yourself over him.)

The

(Chase swung his suit jacket over his shoulder and sauntered out, carefully not looking too hard at where House sat puffing away at a cigar and making Wilson laugh in a way that Chase would never be able to.  “Get some sleep” House called over, and Chase just smiled, knowing that he’d dream of Wilson in that shirt all night and wondering if it was worth it.)

Morning

 (It turned out that Wilson had won the poker tournament, and he was cheerful about it for the next week, until House trumped him with something yet again and wiped the grin off his face.  But until that point Chase revelled in that beautiful smile, even if he wasn’t the one who’d put it there.)

And nothing seems right

It’s five in the morning

I can’t get you out of my mind.